


Romeo

by theLiterator



Series: Nikolai (Male!Natasha) verse [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Angst, Gen, Genderswap, Introspection, Natasha Feels, The Meaning of Fear, Vignette, always-a-boy!Natasha, always-a-girl!Tony, the meaning of rage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Introspective piece that follows Nikolai Romanov through the events of Iron Man 2 and the Avengers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Romeo

Nicholas Rushman was a sharp man in a charcoal suit with excellent lines, a registered notary, and everything Pepper had specifically requested when she’d called down to Legal that morning.

She’d been wracking her brains trying to pull Tony out of her fugue state somehow, and Pepper had come to the conclusion that it was time for contingency M- Tall, dark, handsome, and potentially trouble. (She hadn’t asked Legal for _that_ specifically, but the woman who ran the department and Pepper had known each other for years, so she’d picked up the little hints Pepper had been dropping.)

Add in a few token protests: “He’s a potentially very expensive sexual harassment suit,” and “You can’t have him, Tony. He’s not a _toy_ ,” and she had her best friend hooked.

Perfect, she thought, while Tony admired the way the man had taken out Happy without breaking a sweat, or, more importantly, creasing his suit. (There was a little bit of her that nagged, too perfect, Pep, but she ignored the hell out of that.)

***

Nikolai liked Tony. She was smart; not that this was a surprise, particularly, but there was knowing that someone was smart, and then there was the reality of _Tony_ , intellect like shards of glass, cutting and beautiful. She wielded her genius like a weapon, and it left everyone around her gasping and helpless and in her thrall, and, well, Nikolai appreciated that in a person.

He knew that she was a mark, that he was growing too attached, but he didn’t care, and SHIELD, well-- they were different anyway. He could sleep with her without explicit instructions and no one back at base would second guess him on it.

He didn’t, though.

It was because she was so smart that he knew he couldn’t, and every time he rebuffed her advances, she grinned a little sweeter, pressed a little closer. She would prefer he was her friend, after all, and didn’t trust the men she slept with one iota.

He could hardly blame her.

But then she came to him, vulnerable and tired, asking him what he would do if he knew he was dying, and he told her the truth, and something in the way she looked at him shifted. In that second he’d shown her the truth, she’d seen that everything else he’d ever been for her had been a lie, and he _knew_ she would never trust him again.

He resisted the urge to sigh, to bow his head and tell her his fears the ways she’d told him hers, with quiet innuendo and trembling palms, and instead met shark-bright smile with shark-bright smile.

He wondered, though, what it meant that she still let him play with her repulsor gauntlet.

***

“Wow,” she said, and her eyes were dull and emotionless. “You’re… fired.”

“That’s not up to you,” Nick Fury said, but the way he looked at Nikolai made him wonder if he’d fucked up by _not_ sleeping with this mark. Maybe SHIELD never worried about sleeping with marks without explicit instructions because they weren’t willing to _give_ those instructions.

***

Fuck SHIELD anyway.

***

Until Kolkata, Nikolai had only ever felt fear for one reason; and that fear haunted his dreams, made him wake shuddering and sweating in his narrow, hard bunk at SHIELD HQ and in lush hotel rooms rented by marks and aliases alike.

Until Kolkata, Nikolai thought he knew all there was to know of monsters, thought that the only things that could scare him the dark were phantoms of his past.

In Kolkata, Nikolai looked into fathomless rage and saw himself.

This was what tied the people who tried to change the world together. This bottomless rage that Dr. Banner held in check by will alone; terrorists hired by father-figures; the terror of knowing that you _can’t_ know everything that will kill you in the dark, that _no one_ can.

He thinks, in the moment he pulls his weapons free from where they’ve been concealed, that he finally understands.

Dr. Banner laughs, and the part of Nikolai that is a little boy, locked and tortured in the dark, screams and screams.

***

Tony Stark meets Bruce Banner, and they get along like a house on fire.

Nikolai is disgustingly, horrifically jealous and absents himself immediately. SHIELD’s profile on her had determined that due to Obadiah Stane and unknown levels of influence from her father, she was pathologically incapable of trusting men.

(Agent Coulson had come to him in confidence and told him that when her father had spoken to her through time, she had wept. Nikolai had proceeded to thoroughly delete that footage from both her security systems and the SHIELD databases linked to the bugs in her workshop.)

***

“… A man no more virtuous than you are.”

Fuck Loki anyway. Clint would always be Nikolai’s to save, no matter what lies they told themselves. 

Nikolai was a man who didn’t believe in love, so when he loved someone, he made them his.

And Loki _would not have them._

Even if he had to kill Dr. Banner to ensure that.

***

Thor saved him from rage and fear, quite by accident, and Nikolai hides afterwards.

How could Tony prefer a man who is nothing but fearsome rage over all others? How could--

He held himself as still and small as possible and did _not_ think of other times, other places, other men saving him.

He will always be the prettiest, chosen for the honey traps, one of the Mother Russia’s Romeos, and as such, he will always be the one who is saved, not the one doing the saving.

He allowed himself a moment to breathe, to think, to _hate_ , so that when the comm crackled to life, he could be a monster too.

***

Clint was always Nikolai’s to save.

This sustained him as Clint tried to kill him, close enough that they were sharing breath, close enough that he had _no advantage_. Close enough to love that Nikolai reveled in the sweat and pain and death.

***

Nikolai made a fantastic monster.

He grinned at Captain America, feeling invincible and hurting and not even caring.

He stared at Tony from the top of her tower, watching as she fell and thinking of her as-she-is, frail and tiny and fierce, and everything he could love about her if he believed in love.

None of those qualities included heroism, because he could see it then, especially when Banner grabbed her at the last second before she hit the ground. There was, after all a difference between Tony and himself, between Tony and Banner.

She would never give in, not to fear, not to rage. Banner had seen it all along, Nikolai thought, and he smiled a private little smile before making his way out of the tower to join the team.

If he could love, if he believed in it, he thought he might love Tony Stark who called herself Iron Man and saved Manhattan from SHIELD-launched nuclear missiles.

As it is, he can’t, he doesn’t, and he leaves quietly once Loki is gone for good. Clint will be too caught up in his mourning to follow him straight away, and he needs time to think, to breathe, to prod old wounds and see if they still ache.


End file.
